my toybrick castle

03 Sep, 2024

One of my other hobbies is building up toybrick sets for adults. Think Lego, but not by Lego; Lego is horribly overpriced, their models have serious flaws and their brick quality is not the best on the market anymore. Other good companies tend to be Pantasy and BlueBrixx, for example.

I have my big castle ("Burg Blaustein") from the latter company. Expansions for it are still being released and I am currently in the process of including the second latest expansion my girlfriend bought for us (we always build together), but after completing this one, it will be a good 70x70x70cm and weigh 18kg, consisting of 21.868 pieces. Before properly starting, I specifically bought a table for it with the right measurements and ability to hold the weight.

I write in more detail about the process with lots of progress pictures here on my own website (this was before I had a bear blog) but I will summarize some of it here.

Picture of my girlfriend, a friend, and me building.

This is the base and the first pack you buy. Includes a three story main building holding a kitchen, a dining room, and a bedroom with a toilet, a palisade, entrance and a tree. It's modular, so each story can be easily removed. To look into the rooms. The set and all expansions except the most recent one were designed by a person really knowledgeable in castles, so the castle itself as well as the progression is fairly historically accurate (with minor liberties for fun and due to design limits). Took about 18 hours to build, 20 hours with breaks.

This adds to the mountain the castle is on and adds a keep (the tower). It's modular, so you can remove the roof to look in, and also one of the side walls. Building time was about 10 hours, shorter than the base.

This one increases the size of the castle massively because of adding the outer bailey. The tower grows taller, there is a proper inner gate and stone wall as well as the usual palisade and wooden gate. I think we didn't record how long this took, but I estimate it was about 2-3 days.

I haven't yet gotten to updating this on my website, oops! We built it at the beginning of this year, but then I got very sick and forgot about it. I will add it soon! Have the final look here:

It adds a huge hall that can be flipped open like a book to see inside, and some extras outside.

This is currently in the middle of being built. I had to pause because my currently arthritic hands and shoulders hurt too much to properly build, so the castle is in a state of disarray. Hopefully I can continue soon! It adds a weir walk to the outside and some additional roof details. I don't yet own the fifth expansion, which adds a huge palisade outside and a mint tower. 8)

Published 03 Sep, 2024, edited 2 weeks, 1 day ago

#projects